109 quotes
And here fantastic fishes duskly float,
Using the calm for waters, while their fires
Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.
And the rolling anapaestic
Curled, like vapour over shrines!
Poems (1844)
Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done,
Then bring your gauges.
Aurora Leigh (1857)
And I must bear
What is ordained with patience, being aware
Necessity doth front the universe
With an invincible gesture.
And lips say, "God be pitiful,"
Who ne’er said, "God be praised."
Poems (1844)
Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies.
Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.
"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
Aurora Leigh (1856)
Since when was genius found respectable?
Aurora Leigh (1857)
Every wish
Is like a prayer—with God.
Aurora Leigh (1857)
I think it frets the saints in heaven to see
How many desolate creatures on the earth
Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship
And social comfort, in a hospital.
Aurora Leigh (1857)
For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee!
Let no one till his death
Be called unhappy. Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done.
Aurora Leigh (1856)
She has seen the mystery hid
Under Egypt's pyramid:
By those eyelids pale and close
Now she knows what Rhamses knows.
Last Poems (1862)
God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't.
Aurora Leigh (1857)
And Chaucer, with his infantine
Familiar clasp of things divine.
Poems (1844)
Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.
Aurora Leigh (1857)
In your patience ye are strong.
Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor,
Most gracious singer of high poems! where
The dancers will break footing, from the care
Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)